


God Always Hated Cain

by draculard



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale has his own bloody questions, Biblical Allegories, Canon-Typical Violence, Crisis of Faith, Crowley has trauma from the fall, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, If you use the word canon in the biblical sense, M/M, Really idk what to tag this, Religious Conflict
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-10-01 17:38:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20352946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: "Not the kids," says Crawly, honest and aghast, and suddenly Aziraphale understands why simply asking questions might lead to a fall.





	God Always Hated Cain

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the poem "Ancient History" by Siegfried Sassoon, which I'll share at the end.

What Aziraphale will never admit is that he couldn’t root for Abel. 

He watches the whole ordeal, of course, and he perfectly knows who God’s favorite is. From birth, Cain seems hardened where Abel is soft; he has the capacity to steal if he so wishes, or to lie, or to hurt, or to kill. All humans do, or so the story goes.

But somehow, Abel does not, and Aziraphale knows intellectually that lacking the capacity to hurt isn’t a sin. If anything, that lack of capacity brings Abel closer to God, explains Her favoritism.

Still, as he watches Cain strike Abel, as he watches Abel accept each blow without a fight, he fancies it may be a flaw.

* * *

“Not the kids,” says Crawly, honest and aghast, and suddenly Aziraphale understands how asking questions might lead to a fall. He grimaces and turns away, facing the ark so he won’t have to see the demon staring at him, waiting for an answer.

Yes, the kids, of course — that’s the true answer, and he knows it. The children are not, never will be, never have been exempt. They’re human, too, and some stubborn part of him accepts this. He and Crawly, he suspects, are looking at this in two very different ways.

He sees Crawly watching the kids, eyes narrowed and calculating, and knows that Crawly sees the children playing with a ball made from animal skins, sees them batting it around and laughing. He watches the ball strike a younger child in the face and knows that Crawly takes special note of the older boy who comforts her, and Crawly is thinking, _ They don’t deserve this. They’re just children. _

What Aziraphale sees is the boy who’s smaller than the rest, sitting on the sidelines, pouting because it’s his ball that’s been stolen and will never be given back. What he sees is the malicious intent behind the kick that strikes the girl in the face and makes her cry, the smirk that crosses the offender’s face a moment later, hastily hidden. What he sees is that her comforter just yesterday tormented her by pulling her hair. 

From birth these children, just like Cain, contain free will and the capacity to hurt, and God punishes them for it. 

Why give them free will at all?

What Aziraphale thinks, once he gets past all his hesitations, isn’t very different from what Crawly’s thinking. 

What he says is, “It’s all part of the plan.”

* * *

In all his six thousand years on Earth, Aziraphale never meets a child — no matter how well-behaved and conscientious — incapable of leaving sticky fingerprints on a rare book. He appreciates that about humans; at the same time, he’s careful to bar them from his shop as much as possible. 

If they’d had books when Cain and Abel were still alive, he knows Abel would have been the Golden Child to treat a book as though it were a king. He would have left no sticky fingerprints; he would have torn no pages; he would not have colored in the margins. Cain, Aziraphale knows, would have wasted no time in destroying it; within an hour, it would have been gone, the spine gutted and pages strewn in the mud, and Cain would consider the destruction to be remarkable play.

And Crowley would look at Abel’s broken body later on, at the red blossom in his perfect curls, and curse the god who granted him the ability to die.

And Aziraphale would look at Cain and curse the god who punished him, the god who made him as he was and sentenced him to wander, forever marked, for the gift of cruelty she bestowed on him at birth.

* * *

When he finally tells Crowley, almost off-hand, all he says is, “I always loved Cain better than Abel.” And the next words, wrenched from his throat against his will, are, "Someone had to."

He doesn’t understand the play of emotions over Crowley’s face just then. It’s too many things mixed up all at once. He sees surprise but senses at the same time that Crowley must have known this about him for years. He sees confusion at war with understanding. He sees sadness in the downward turn of Crowley’s lips and joy flying up behind dark glasses.

He sees the flush crawling over Crowley’s cheeks. 

As long as he lives, Aziraphale suspects he’ll never understand that flush.

**Author's Note:**

> "Ancient History"  
Siegfried Sassoon
> 
> Adam, a brown old vulture in the rain,  
Shivered below his wind-whipped olive-trees;  
Huddling sharp chin on scarred and scraggy knees,  
He moaned and mumbled to his darkening brain;  
‘He was the grandest of them all—was Cain!  
‘A lion laired in the hills, that none could tire;  
‘Swift as a stag; a stallion of the plain,  
‘Hungry and fierce with deeds of huge desire.’
> 
> Grimly he thought of Abel, soft and fair—  
A lover with disaster in his face,  
And scarlet blossom twisted in bright hair.  
‘Afraid to fight; was murder more disgrace? ...  
‘God always hated Cain’ ... He bowed his head—  
The gaunt wild man whose lovely sons were dead.


End file.
